In this third installment of our step-by-step series on using Microsoft Office for Windows, we show how to design a personal budget using either Microsoft Excel 5.0 or, as we used, Microsoft Excel for Windows 95.

One New Year's resolution for many people is to design a personal budget for themselves and stick to it. Users of Microsoft Excel will find that help is at hand in accomplishing this task, as Microsoft Excel for Windows 95 includes a Personal Budgeter template.

If you have not yet moved to Windows 95 and Microsoft Excel for Windows 95, see the section entitled Personal Budgeting: Microsoft Excel where we have provided a Microsoft Excel 5.0 multitabbed spreadsheet model that will accomplish most, but not all, of the tasks that you can do with the Microsoft Excel for Windows 95 Personal Budgeter.

1. From the File menu select New, click on Spreadsheet Solutions, and select the Personal Budgeter tab. On the sheet, click the Customize button. This brings up a sheet that allows you to personalize your budget by adding your name, address, phone number, fax number, and spouse's name. When you're finished, click the Lock/Save Sheet button at the top of the Customize sheet.

2. You will then be prompted as to whether you want simply to "lock" the information in the sheet or whether you also want to save it at the same time. Locking and saving the template means that the personal information stays with the template when you save it, so you do not have to re-enter the information every time the template is used.

Since this is the first time you have worked with the template, and have just entered a batch of data into it, it is a good idea to choose the Save option. Then simply name the file and begin entering data.

3. Enter your total monthly income by clicking the Income Data sheet, detailing both your gross monthly income and money that has been set aside for taxes. Add any income and tax data from your spouse in the second column. This information may be shown on pay stubs from your place of employment. There is also room at the bottom of the sheet to insert any details about the income, such as the fact that perhaps the figures represent only a monthly average of your income.

4. Now it's time to supply information on what you spend. You'll start by clicking the Utilities Data sheet and entering data from six months worth of your bills for standard utilities such as electricity, gas, cable television, and telephone. The template will automatically total these expenses. Irrelevant categories (such as cable TV if you don't have a cable TV subscription) may be left blank. At the bottom of this screen, enter the amount you want to set aside as a contingency percentage (leaving you a cushion against higher expenses than expected in any given month).

5. Next, your Personal Budgeter will require information about your monthly car, life, health, homeowner, and any other insurance payments you make. Click the Insurance Data tab and enter the amounts as shown on the screen. Once again, irrelevant categories may be left blank.

6. Record your monthly living expenses by clicking the Living Expenses Data tab, and entering your monthly rent or mortgage payments, car payments, commuting expenses, groceries, loans, etc. Do not enter entertainment expenses (such as movies and restaurant meals).

7. Now click the Entertainment Data tab and provide a monthly figure for money spent on dining out, movies, music, books, vacations (or at least an estimate of what you might want to be saving per month toward a vacation), and miscellaneous expenses. It's a good idea to review your checkbook ledger and cash receipts to make sure you don't miss any regular expenses on this list.

8. Credit Cards data is the next category. Click the Credit Cards Data tab and record information about which cards you have, the interest rate you pay on each, your current balance and the amount you pay monthly.

9. Click the Budget Summary tab to compare your income to your expenses. You'll know whether to expect a shortfall or surplus at the end of each month based on these figures. The column for contingency planning takes into account the amounts you would have set aside in the contingency cells of all the expenses-related sheets. You may never need to use this, but having it provides you with a potential 10 to 15 percent "cushion" against unexpected spikes in expenses in any of the major categories. The No Contingency column shows you what your actual figures are without this cushion.

10. You can get a quick snapshot of your income vs. expenses by clicking the Budget Graph tab to see a graphical representation of your monthly budget, with a pie chart showing, by percentage, where your money is spent every month.

11. Finally, as you work with the Personal Budgeter, you may also wish to use the Budgeter toolbar that comes with it. To display this toolbar, right-click on the standard Microsoft Excel toolbar and select the Budgeter toolbar from the list. It can then be dragged anywhere on your screen and used to help you with your budgeting. It includes tools for hiding and displaying CellTips, Documenting a Cell, using Template Help, Displaying and Renaming Examples, Splitting and Freezing panes, and bringing up the standard Windows Calculator.

When the Parent Teacher Association of Windsor Elementary School in Arlington Heights, Illinois decided to change the way it did its annual student directory for 1995, Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel were there to do the job.

Marsha and Steve Magnino coordinated the project and made creative use of Microsoft Excel to design a directory that would provide much more than just a list of names, addresses and phone numbers. Along with all the basic student data, they were able to gather information about which parents were willing to volunteer for regular school activities, as well as for the PTA's many and varied social activities. The data was put into a well-organized Microsoft Excel spreadsheet to create a more useful directory.

The mail merge functions in Microsoft Word were used to apply the layout, design, and editing power of Word without having to re-enter information that was already in Microsoft Excel. Here's how they did it so you can try it yourself:

1. For each of the categories they wanted in the database, they started with a blank Microsoft Excel sheet and entered the category name at the top of each column with the data relating to that column beneath it. The AutoFilter feature in Microsoft Excel created drop-down boxes on each column telling which parents had signed up to volunteer for which events.

2. After creating and saving the Microsoft Excel database, the group then used Mail Merge to create the school directory. To try this yourself, start Word, select Tools and click Mail Merge, launching Mail Merge Helper. From the drop-down menu on the top Main Document Create option select Catalog as the style of mail merged document to create.

3. The PTA had a document already prepared to merge. To do it yourself, click on the Catalog option and you will be asked whether you want to use the active window or create your own. Click Active Window.

4. You will have to specify a data source when the Mail Merge Helper asks for one. From the Open Data Source item under the Get Data command, select the file where you saved your Microsoft Excel data in Steps 1 and 2. Tell Mail Merge Helper whether you want to merge with the whole spreadsheet or only a portion of it.